Viswanathan Anand column: Enterprising Gukesh and resilient Ding battle on as wait for breakthrough continues

D Gukesh and China’s Ding Liren exchange greetings during the World Chess Championship, in Singapore. File
| Photo Credit: PTI/FIDE

After the rest day, Gukesh came ready to do battle for Game 7 of the World chess championship in Singapore. He had a new idea in a system which has been played extensively in the past and managed to navigate the middle game expertly. The position was complex and many of the moves were very hard, but Gukesh showed his exceptional ability to calculate, and found several difficult moves. I found his play from moves 23 to move 36 impressive.

They reached an endgame which was technically won for Gukesh, but Ding continued to find the toughest defence. This was high drama and the audience followed every twist and turn in this fantastic game.

Gukesh finally made a mistake by moving his king to e1 on move 44, Ding found the reply f6, a very fine move, and at that point the technical task had become quite difficult. Gukesh didn’t see a hidden resource that Ding had spotted and the advantage fizzled out. So, an absolutely brilliant game by Gukesh but Ding showed his class by defending well.

After the exhausting Game 7, Ding played the English Opening and Gukesh followed a system that many years ago Grzegorz Gajewski had recommended for me. He equalised and more importantly, it gave Gukesh the chance to keep the position combative.

Ding had the two bishops but Gukesh blunted played the original Ne7and f6 and got a good centre. Ding lost his concentration momentarily and allowed a b5 break whilst trying to prevent it. Ding then sacrificed his a2 pawn, though he revealed in the press conference that this was simply an oversight.

Probably he feels that counter-attack is the best form of defence against Gukesh. Now Gukesh made a serious mistake: moving the wrong knight. From a position where Gukesh had very serious winning chances, suddenly he was worse and he was going to have to fight for the draw. Gukesh adjusted to the new situation and made the right defensive moves, and just when Ding offered him a repetition of moves, he declined the draw in a worse position. Ding couldn’t figure out the complicated way forward and decided to force the draw and Gukesh had to agree.

Game 9 never got going and resulted in an uneventful draw.

Gukesh is coming closer to breaking through, but Ding is showing his resilience. The price of a breakthrough now is very high.